


in the way his hands shake

by brighteyed



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Mentions of Past Sexual Trauma, Mentions of graphic violence, Nightmares, Okumura Eiji Needs a Hug, Post-Canon, Post-Side Story: Garden of Light, Sleep Deprivation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 17:58:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18665488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brighteyed/pseuds/brighteyed
Summary: He grasped the edges of the sink as the world tilted off-balance for a second, knuckles turning white, stars swimming in his eyes as he stood upright.Hemingway's leopard doesn't come back down the mountain.





	in the way his hands shake

A scream tore through Eiji’s throat as he sat upright, the dim red numbers of the alarm clock casting a devilish glow across his bedsheets. The TV crinkled with static on the stand across the room, replacing the nameless late-night pulp thriller that had been playing just hours earlier. Sweat pooled on his forehead and he wiped it away with shaky hands as he turned to face the clock next to him, his chest heaving.

He checked the clock’s face, both surprised and unsurprised at the answer before him. _2:23 am_. Not bad. That made it about six hours of sleep he’d gotten this week, give or take an hour. Eiji wasn’t counting.

After the first week of these nightmares he’d begun to track just how long he could go without sleep. He knew the effects of sleep deprivation like the back of his hand – the shivers he’d get from caffeine pills, the added bruises from running into corners or tables, the slight fuzziness that would come when Sing asked him a question about his shoots or Buddy or what he was cooking that night (or about anything, really). Always a few more hours, pushing himself just a little further until he reaches a point where he shakes with exhaustion and Sing gives him sideways looks.

He’d made the decision early on that the shivers and the bruises were worth the ability to avoid sweat-soaked nights like these. Sleep deprivation doesn’t make you relive your worst memories. It doesn’t give you phantom pains shooting through your side with every breath. It doesn’t make you shiver at the memory of a knife tracing across your skin, of silken ropes holding your hands above your head, of the caress of a sheet across your lower half.

It doesn’t remind you that you killed the only thing tethering you to this mortal coil.

Eiji knows, deep down, that it wasn’t his fault. He didn’t drive the knife into Ash’s side. That’d been Lao. He didn’t fail to correct Lao on where Chinatown stood with Ash. That’d been Sing.

He didn’t sit there in that library for hours, blood dripping onto his shoes and staining the pages in front of him. That’d been Ash.

Exhaustion was a welcome embrace and a scorching flame, a gentle caress and a scorned lover. In the haze of exhaustion he could unwind, he could relax, he could forget.

Sleep was not that merciful. He was Tantalus and sleep was the ever-retreating pool of water and hanging fruit; sleep lured him in and ripped into him with razor-sharp claws. Sleep was a never-ending carousel of his fault _his fault his fault –_

Shorter appeared often, pupils shrunk to a point and tears flowing freely from his eyes. The absence of his sunglasses and the scratches lining his body had made him look almost feral at the end, muscles twitching in a futile effort to hold himself back from driving the knife directly into Eiji’s chest. Griffin, too, catatonic as the shot ripped through his body, freeing him the delirious hell he had been drowning in for a decade. Skipper, Jennifer, the guys who had died on missions meant to save him or Ash or both all paraded through his mind in a macabre dance, taunting him, mocking him, molesting him. Those were the good nights.

The bad nights were full of sensation, so much that his body felt like a wire strung between two posts, raw with electricity and pain. Yut-Lung’s hair trailing across his body as he secured Eiji to the bedpost, the scrape of Dino’s mustache by his ear as he detailed every vile thing he planned to do to him, the creak of the mattress as Dino had his way with Yut-Lung on the bed next to him. The way the pain snaked through his side as Yut-Lung’s minion shot him in that musty apartment hideout, the moldy air flitting in and out of his lungs as he gasped for breath. The drip of Shorter’s blood blooming on his cheek before his full weight hit Eiji, pinning him to the floor crushing his lungs he couldn’t breathe _he couldn’t breathe_ _he couldn’t breathe_.

He didn’t like to think about those nights.

What was it Shorter had said? _Set me free._ He’d been thinking a lot on freedom these days, of spreading his wings and escaping this less-than-gilded cage. There was a need to be unbound, to finally shake the sensation of silk ropes from his wrists. He wanted to fly again, to feel the pole underneath his hands as he soared above a crowd, their cheers lifting him higher and higher until his feet scraped the clouds.

Water splashed his face as he leaned over the sink in his bathroom, removing the sticky sheen of sweat from his skin, firmly tethering him to reality once more. His shirt was stained with it, water running down his arms as he lifted some up to drink. He grasped the edges of the sink as the world tilted off-balance for a second, knuckles turning white, stars swimming in his eyes as he stood upright.

_Damn. I should probably try and sleep again, just for a little bit more. Maybe now the dark circles won’t be so obvious whenever Sing comes over in the morning, or maybe that’s just wishful thinking._

He made eye contact with himself briefly in the mirror as he rose, eyes glazed over from exhaustion, shoulders softly trembling. God, he really looked like shit. No wonder Sing was so worried.

He made his way back to his bed slowly, his head aching with fatigue as he climbed under the sheets. His bed was a welcome comfort even after all this time, Eiji’s body easily sinking into the pillows like it had any right to belong there.

The alarm clock still faced him, blinking at him, taunting him. _I’ll be right here. Don’t worry, Eiji. I’m not going anywhere._

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to dig in to Eiji's mindset after the events of Garden of Light - I believe Eiji had never really given himself the time to process the trauma of Ash's death, constantly digging his heels in and denying it happened. It's a common thing with trauma survivors that when you give yourself the time and resources to process what happened to you, it hits you with all of the grace of a speeding train. I wanted to see what that would be like for Eiji.
> 
> Inspired by "Nightmare" and "The Past Dream" off of the Banana Fish image album. It's seriously amazing, you guys should give it a listen.
> 
> I couldn't have done this without the help of Iman and the Twitter groupchat, so if you're reading this, thank you for your input and support. I've barely written in a year and I managed to turn this out in a few days thanks to your help.


End file.
